ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Making the World Safe from Competition2. Trade Associations and Codes of Ethics3. Political Alternatives4. Under the Blue Eagle and Beyond5. The Steel Industry6 . The Natural-Resource Industries7. Retailing and Textiles8. In RetrospectNotesBibliographyIndex

AcknowledgmentsI wish to acknowledge my gratitude to a number of persons whose assistance was helpful in the bringing of this book to publication.First, I would like to thank Robert Love who, knowing of my interest inthis subject matter, first encouraged me to write this book more years agothan I care to remember. Shortly thereafter, I received valuable assistancefrom the late F. A. Harper and Kenneth Templeton, who helped me to focusthe scope of this inquiry.I must also acknowledge the help provided by Mills F. Edgerton, Jr., ofBucknell University Press, as well as Julien Yoseloff and the editors of Associated University Presses. I further wish to express my gratitude to JanetKnoedler for her critical review and analysis of my work. Her perspectiveand constructive suggestions helped greatly to improve the original manuscript. I also wish to thank my daughters-Heidi, Gretchen, and Bretignefor their invaluable assistance in helping to produce the graphics containedin this book. I also want to acknowledge the help of Jeannie Nicholson andMartha Fink.Acknowledgment must also be made to the Southwestern University LawReview, which published portions of my research as separate articles in volumes 10 and 20 of the law review. I wish also to acknowledge the followingpermissions to reprint copyrighted materials contained in this book:"Business and Government," by John T. Flynn. Copyright 63 1928 by Harper's Magazine.All rights reserved. Reproduced from the March issue by special permission.The Logic of Collective Action, by Mancur Olson. Reprinted by permission of the publishers from The Logic o f Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory o f Groups, by MancurOlson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright O 1965, 1971 by the Presidentand Fellows of Harvard College.The Epic of American Industry, by James Walker, 1949. Permission granted byHarperCollins Publishers."Toward Stability," an editorial appearing in Business Week, 10 May 1933, at page 32.Permission granted by Business Week.

10

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

An article appearing in volume 131 of The Iron Age, 25 May 1933, at page 835. Permission granted by Chilton Company, Capital CitieslABC, Inc."A Current Appraisal of the National Recovery Administration," by Dudley Cates, involume 172 of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March1934, at pages 132-34. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications, Inc.Two articles, appearing in volume 26 of The Oil and Gas Journal, 2 February 1928, atpage 36, and 12 April 1928, at page 36. Permission granted by Oil and Gas Journal.

In Restraintof Trade

Introduction[Tlhe forces which count toward a readjustment of institutions inany modern industrial community are chiefly economic forces; ormore specifically, these forces take the form of pecuniary pressure.Such a readjustment as is here contemplated is substantially achange in men's views as to what is good and right, and the meansthrough which a change is wrought in men's apprehension of whatis good and right is in large part the pressure of pecuniary exigencies.T h o r s t e i n Veblen

Until relatively recent times, the symbiotic relationship existing between economic and political institutions has only been vaguely comprehended. It hasbeen popular to view these two major sectors of American society as havinga generally antagonistic relationship, with political institutions serving as acountervailing force to economic influence. This view is reflected in the traditional conception of economic history that suggests the American businesssystem had, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, maintained an existence largely independent of, and indifferent to, the interests ofthe American public. The business community in this era is seen by many asruthless and hegemonic, exercising nearly unlimited corporate power thatthreatened the very foundations of a free and competitive economic system.Those who hold to this view insist that the interests of the public requiredthe imposition of political controls to regulate such matters as trade practices, pricing policies, and the size and entry of business firms in the market.It supports a consensus that government regulation of economic activity represents a national policy commitment to elevating the "ethical plane" ofcompetition in order that market influences may more freely serve somevaguely defined "general welfare." One business scholar has reflected thisattitude well:It is not always safe to leave business to its own devices; experience has shownthat its freedom will sometimes be abused. . Competitors have been harassed

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IN RESTRAINT OF TRADE

14

by malicious and predatory tactics, handicapped by discrimination, excludedfrom markets and sources of supply, and subjected to intimidation, coercion,and physical violence. Consumers have been victimized by short weights andmeasures, by adulteration, and by misrepresentation of quality and price; theyhave been forced to contribute to the profits of monopoly.,[Tlhe nation's resources have been dissipated through extravagantmethods of exploitation. These abuses have not characterized all business atall times, but they have occurred with sufficient frequency to justify the imposition of controls. Regulation is clearly required, not only to protect the investor, the worker, the consumer, and the community at large against the unscrupulous businessman, but also to protect the honest businessman against hisdishonest competitor.'

..

This impression of the purposes and effects of the regulatory process isreinforced by a common historical view of the 1920s as the declining yearsof laissez-faire capitalism, in which "big business" had its last profligatefling before being brought under the discipline of rational, politically supervised economic planning. Indeed, the so-called Great Depression that endedthis decade is generally perceived as one of the high-water marks of corporate dissipation and irresponsibility, ushering in the uncomfortable aftereffects of the 1930s. The New Deal is, to this day, regarded as a major turningpoint in government and business relationships, and represents to many theinevitable consequences of undisciplined market power. The National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National LaborRelations Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as the operation ofintraindustrial agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission,the Securities Exchange Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and theFederal Power Commission, are commonly depicted by historians as havingimposed competitive discipline and socially responsible behavior upon a recalcitrant business community.Paralleling this view of history, however, is a recognition that government regulation has generally served to further the very economic interestsbeing regulated. The economist-and later United States senator-PaulDouglas was not the first to become aware of this fact when, in 1935, heobserved with some bewilderment, "Public regulation has proved most ineffective. Instead of the regulatory commissions controlling the private utilities, the utilities have largely controlled the regulatory cornmissi~ns."~Norwas he the last to perceive the truth of that proposition. Indeed, in the intervening years, research has revealed the dominant influence of commercialand industrial interests in shaping and directing government regulatory policies in order to advance such business interest^.^ While there is a debate as towhether businessmen had advocated the establishment of political agenciesin order to structure the marketplace for their benefit or had only captured

INTRODUCTION

15

such agencies after they had been created, few would question the idea thatthe regulatory processes of government have been actively and purposefullyemployed by business interests in order to gain advantages denied them inthe marketplace.Though recognizing the existence of a legitimate debate on the questionof the origins of regulatory legislation, one of the underlying premises of thisbook is that most political intervention into economic activity has been fostered by business leaders and trade associations desirous of restraining oreliminating those trade practices of their competitors that most threatenedexisting market positions or price structures. As historian Gabriel Kolko andothers have observed, competition was very intense among business firms inthe early twentieth century. Firms with established market positions wantedto reduce the impact of such competition and employed voluntary methods(such as mergers, pooling, trade association "codes of ethics," and otheragreements)in efforts to stabilize competitive relationships. When such voluntary means failed due to lack of effective enforcement, influential corporateleaders, having found a condition of unrestrained competition and decisionmaking unacceptable to their interests, helped promote the enactment oflegal restraints upon trade practices. As Kolko has written:The dominant fact of American political life at the beginning of this centurywas that big business led the struggle for the federal regulation of the economy.If economic rationalization could not be attained by mergers and voluntaryeconomic methods, a growing number of important businessmen reasoned,perhaps political means might succeede4Or, as an earlier scholar, Myron Watkins, noted: "From the time of PresidentTheodore Roosevelt's second administration there had been an insistent movement among certain industrial leaders for either a legislative or administrative definition of an exact standard of competitive c o n d u ~ t . " ~It is the purpose of this book to inquire into the attitudes of businessleaders toward competition during the years 1918-38 and to see how thoseattitudes became translated into proposals for controllingcompetition throughpolitical machinery under the direction of trade associations. This particulartwenty-year period has been selected because of the fundamental metamorphosis taking place within the business community itself and the importanceof this era in the history of government regulation of economic activity. Duringthese years, men of commerce and industry began forging, through the tradeassociations, a consensus as to the proper scope and intensity of competitivebehavior. This twenty-year period brackets American business experienceswith two major industry dominated government regulatory systems: the WarIndustries Board (WIB) and the National Recovery Administration (NRA).Under these two systems, businessmen increasingly exhibited a disposition

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for a collectivized authority over one another, with trade associations serving as government-backed enforcement agencies. Perhaps the historian RobertWiebe has best summarized the attitudes toward government-business relationships with which business leaders emerged from World War I. Recognizing that "[olnly the government could ensure the stability and continuityessential to their welfare," men of commerce and industry did not focusupon a "neutralization of the government." On the contrary, "They wanteda powerful government, but one whose authority stood at their disposal; astrong, responsive government through which they could manage their ownaffairs in their own way."6The attraction of so many business leaders to systems of governmentenforced trade practice standards reflected a continuing institutionalizationof economic life. The systemwide benefits of maintaining openness in competition-with no legal restrictions on freedom of entry into the marketplaceor on the terms and conditions for which parties could contract with oneanother-were being rejected by business organizations more concerned withthe survival of individual firms and industries. As a consequence, businessleaders expressed an increasing desire for the maintenance of conditions ofequilibrium that would help preserve the positions of existing firms. Freeand unrestrained competition demanded a continuing resiliency in responding to market changes. The innovation in products, services, and businessmethods that made economic life creative and vibrant came to be seen as athreat to the survival of firms unable or unwilling to respond. Concerns forsecurity and stability began to take priority over autonomy and spontaneityin the thinking of most business leaders.There were a number of factors that helped to influence efforts on behalfof government-enforced equilibrium policies. To begin with, there were significant organizational and technological changes that occurred within thebusiness system, both prior to and following World War I, to which businessmen had to respond. One analyst of the business scene, Carl F. Taeusch,declared that the factor that did the most to stimulate the growth of tradeassociations was "the advent of trade--or industrial-as opposed to individual c~mpetition."~Taeusch noted that starting with the early 1900s andcontinuing through the 1920s, American business underwent quite radicalchanges in the development of major new industries and new methods ofmanufacture and product distribution. The combination of these factors hada major impact not only upon the firms within the industries that were undergoing such changes but also upon businesses indirectly related to suchindustries. The principal new industries included those producing automobiles, airplanes, electrical power, and products powered by electricity (including radio, motion pictures, the phonograph, and consumer appliances).There was also a total revamping of the petroleum industry-which, prior to

INTRODUCTIONthe automobile and electricity, had existed primarily as a source of lighting-accompanied by a realignment of the relative market positions of petroleum, electricity, and coal as fuel and power sources.The revolutionary changes in distribution methods included the development of chain stores, direct selling by manufacturers, vertically integratedretailing organizations, and the growth of new consumer credit practices.The new manufacturing methods embraced many industries and resulted ina restructuring of business organizations to take advantage of new efficiencies brought about by such new production methods. The combination ofthese factors led to the growth of product (or "industrial") competition.Some of the consequences to industries of such radical changes are given byTaeusch:The use of structural steel and cement in the building industry has confrontedthe lumber interests with a problem of self-preservation;changes in food habits and the more aggressive tactics of new food businesses have faced the olderstaple-goods concerns with the problem of rapidly declining sales; style changesruthlessly affect the use of textile goods. . .Taeusch's explanation found support in the analysis offered by economist Joseph Schumpeter. Addressing himself to the "process of CreativeDestruction," through which established firms are challenged and often replaced by new sources of competition, Schumpeter concluded that price competition is not the most significant factor to which firms have to respond. Inhis view, "it is not that kind of competition which counts but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply,the new type of organization. . . competition which commands a decisivecost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profitsand the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their verylives." Citing retailing as an example, Schumpeter declared that the competition that was most critical arose "not from additional shops of the sametype, but from the department store, the chain store, the mail-order houseand the supermarket. . . ."9 Whatever its relative significance vis-A-vis pricecompetition, there is no doubt that the processes emphasized by Schumpeterserved as the progenitor of economic advancements that revolutionizedAmerican life: the replacement of the horse by the automobile and of thekerosene lamp by the electric light; the opening up of worldwide systems ofcommunication, transportation, and distribution; and the introduction ofthe consumer to an increased variety of services and products.In such a volatile climate, change became one of the few constants uponwhich businessmen could rely. Economic survival often depended upon innovative resiliency; firms with higher unit costs and prices had to either become more efficient or drop out of the race. Instability and turnover were

.

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IN RESTRAINT OF TRADE

continuing threats with which firms had to contend. The severity of the competitive struggle was best reflected in the automobile industry: of the 181firms manufacturing cars at some time during the years 1903 to 1926, 83remained in business as of 1922, while 20 managed to survive through 1938.1°In addition to the technological and organizational sources of change, tradepolicies proved disquieting. So intense was the pace of competition that manyfirms turned, with increasing frequency, to aggressive sales practices and lowered prices in order to gain some comparative advantage. The consequence,of course, was to further heighten the intensity of trade rivalry. Businessmenseeking nothing more than the most pragmatic route to survival in such acompetitive and evolving environment became pariahs to industry colleagues.Such aggressive trade practices provided the climate in which Americanbusiness found itself as it entered World War I. Paradoxically, men of commerce and industry found, in the wartime management of the WIB, a temporary respite from what many regarded as the killing pace of commercialwarfare. The economic cease-fire imposed by a centrally directed alliance ofgovernment and business afforded businessmen the opportunity of experiencing a less-menacing trade atmosphere. When peace was restored to therest of the world, however, competitive aggression returned to the marketplace. Businessmen, recalling the managed harmony of the war years,confronted the intensely competitive 1920s with hopes of realizing a moredurable and predictable setting in which to conduct business. Firms thatviewed the processes of change as threats to their positions began organizingresistance. Speaking to this phenomenon, economist Walter Adams observedthat such firms "quickly and instinctively understood that storm shelters hadto be built to protect themselves against this destructive force."llBusinessmen confronted not only the kinds of changes observed byTaeusch and Schumpeter but a political environment within which antibusiness sentiments were widespread." As Wiebe has observed, political hostility toward large industrial combinations, and a good deal of confusion overSupreme Court cases that sought to distinguish "reasonable" and "unreasonable" restraints of trade, left the business community in a somewhat unsettled frame of mind.13 These "tensions from political uncertainty and economic instability"14 generated a transformation in the thinking of businessleaders. Politics and ideology became employed in the efforts of businessmen"to protect their positions of leadership in America's twentieth-century society in tran~ition.''~~The result was a more conciliatory attitude towardsgovernment; for purely pragmatic reasons business leaders attempted to absorb reform movements and use them to their advantages.A very broad range of social and economic conditions existed duringthe years 1918-38: a war, an era of seemingly endless prosperity, the GreatDepression, and the New Deal with its promises of a politically engineered

INTRODUCTION

19

recovery. Continuing throughout this period, however, was an organizationaltransformation that had begun long before World War I: the "collectivization" of human society. The principle of "collective organization," postulating the superior interests of the group over those of its individual members,was emerging within the business system as well as within other sectors ofsociety. Because "collectivism" reflects conservative, status quo sentiments,its underlying premises were consistent with business efforts to resist change.Industries organized themselves through the machinery of the trade associations and began the task of altering the attitudes, belief systems, and practicesthat represented the old order. Business decision-making that emphasizedthe well-being of the individual firm was to be eschewed in favor of attitudesthat stressed the collective interests of the industry itself. Individual profitmaximizing was to be de-emphasized when confronted by the "greater interests of the group"; independence and self-centeredness were to be put asidein favor of a more "cooperative" form of "friendly competition."Nothing so threatened the interests of this emerging industrial order asthe free play of market forces at work in an environment of legally unrestrained competition. Nothing so preoccupied industry-oriented business leaders in the post-World War I years as the effort to structure this environmentso as to keep the conduct of trade within limits that posed no threat to theircollective interests. Throughout the years 1918-3 8, there was a consistenteffort by many business officials and trade associations to develop a spirit of"business cooperation" through which, it was hoped, severe competitivepressures could be restrained. As we shall discover; many business leaderstried to establish systems of business relationships that would mitigate aggressive competitive practices and reduce the threat of economic loss to firmsunable to withstand such competition. One finds industry leaders and tradegroups railing constantly against the "price cutter," the "cutthroat" competitor, and the entrepreneurial interloper who dared to "invade the territory" of an established competitor. Such efforts invariably began withvoluntary methods of "self-restraint." When voluntary approaches failed toproduce the desired stability, many businessmen-mindful of the advantagesexperienced under the WIB-sought to effectuate this spirit of "cooperation" through politically backed programs designed to fashion a greater degree of centralized business decision-making. Characterizing their proposalsas "industrial self-regulation," business spokesmen and trade associationsworked to secure for themselves a diluted competitive environment that wouldnot be threatening to their interests. Such political efforts to control tradepractices led, ultimately, to the enactment of the National Industrial Recovery Act, a piece of legislation put to death in 1935 by the U.S. SupremeCourt. We shall examine both the contributions and responses of businessmen to this recovery program and will consider the post-NRA ~ e r i o din

IN RESTRAINT OF TRADEorder to determine whether its existence had significantly affected the policyrecommendations of business leaders for controlling trade practices.After a more general development, in the first four chapters, of businessresponses to competition, we shall examine a number of specific industries.In chapters 5 through 7, we shall look at such industries as steel, petroleum,coal, textile manufacturing, and retailing in order to obtain a more detailedunderstanding of competitive conditions and business responses to those conditions. These particular industries were selected for a number of reasons:(1)they were all considered major industries throughout the period encompassed by this book and were among the principal industries undergoing thesubstantial changes discussed by Taeusch and Schumpeter; ( 2 )representingsuch diverse fields as capital goods manufacturing, natural resource development, consumer goods manufacturing, and retailing, they provide a faircross section of American commerce and industry; (3)not having had a "public utility" status imposed upon them, these industries were, for the mostpart, open to entry by would-be competitors and had pricing practices determined by market rather than political influences; and, ( 4 ) because competition was particularly intense within these industries during this period, someof the most spirited and vocal efforts to tranquilize competitive inclinationscame from these sectors of the economy. An examination of other industriesreveals similar tendencies and influences at work, and it is believed that theindustries selected for specific study herein offer a fairly representative picture of the development of business attitudes toward competition and regulation during the twenty years following the end of World War I.

Making the WorldSafe from CompetitionThe evolution of society is substantially a process of mental adaptation on the part of individuals under the stress of circumstanceswhich will no longer tolerate habits of thought formed under andconforming to a different set of circumstances in the past.-Thorstein Veblen

In order to put business responses to competitive practices during the postwar years in proper perspective, one must begin with the WIB. The war itselfserved as a catalyst for the emergence of corporate institutionalism. As thehistorian William Leuchtenburg has stated:

...

The war confirmed the triumph of large-scale industrial organization.[It]speeded both popular acceptance and acceptance in the business world of thevirtues of large-scale, amalgamated, oligopolisticindustries. . In 1916 Americastill thought to a great degree in terms of nineteenth-century values of decentralization, competition, equality, agrarian supremacy, and the primacy of thesmall town. By 1920 the triumph of the twentieth century-centralized, industrialized, secularized, urbanized-while by no means complete, could clearlybe foreseen.'

..

The historian Robert Wiebe has observed that "the mobilization of 1917and 1918 illuminated the degree to which an emerging bureaucratic systemhad actually ordered American ~ociety."~With the trade associations helping to supply the coordination, the WIBpoliticized the bulk of the economic life of this country during World War I.This agency played the central role in the most elaborate and pervasiveexercise of government regulation of economic activity undertaken withinthe United States up to that time. Aided by a myriad of other agencies and

IN RESTRAINT OF TRADEsubagencies, the WIB afforded the business community the unprecedentedopportunity to experience business-directed government planning as a toolfor the central direction of American industry. For some eighteen months,the American business system had a front row seat from which to observeand assess the apparatus for industry-wide control of commercial practices.The value of such an experience to many within the business communitycannot be overstated. One must, therefore, begin any inquiry into postwarbusiness attitudes with at least a brief description of the agency that hadprovided businessmen with some practical experience in controlling competitive beha~ior.~In furtherance of the war effort, the WIB centralized the economic life ofAmerica into a highly structured bureaucracy under the effective directionand control of leading business interests. Matters relating to the production,pricing, and allocation of strategic goods and services were handled not bythe impersonal forces of the marketplace, but by the quite personal directionof businessmen armed with governmental authority. American industry had,in short, become "mobilized" in the most literal, military sense of the word.Depending upon how one viewed the practice, American businesses foundthemselves subject to political "coordination" or "regimentation" in furtherance of collective goals. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. has provided an accurate summary:For a moment Washington became the unchallenged economic capital of thenation. Through the War Industries Board, the government mobilized industrial production. Through the War Food Administration, it sought to controlthe production and consumption of food. Through the Capital Issues Committee, it tried to regulate private investment. Through the War Finance Corporation, it directed and financed industrial expansion. It took over the railroadsand the telephone and telegraph system. It set up independent public corporations in diverse fields from the United States Housing Corporation to the Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation, from the Sugar Equalization Boardto the Spruce Production CorporationO4

Another historian, Frederick Lewis Allen, more succinctly characterized theWIB as an agency with "almost dictatorial power to decide to what uses theindustrial machinery of the country might be applied. "sWith the backing of the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Councilof National Defense created the WIB in July 1917. It charged it toact as a clearing house for the war industry needs of the Government, determine the most effective ways of meeting them and the best means and methodsof increasing production, including the creation or extension of industries demanded by the emergency, the sequence and relative urgency of the needs ofthe different Government services, and consider price factors, and in the first

1/ MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FROM COMPETITION

23

instance the industrial and labor aspects of the problems involved and thegeneral questions affectingthe purchase of commoditie~.~On 4 March 1918, pursuant to a directive from President Wilson, the WIBwas reorganized as an agency separate and apart from the Council ofNational Defense; it now operated under direct responsibility to the president. The WIB was, then, the creature of implied wartime executive authority, not of any legislative enactment.Under the virtual autocracy of its chairman, Bernard M. Baruch-a manwhose role had been described by one colleague as "the supreme interpreterof the national goodn-the WIB undertook the task of establishing prioritiesand setting the prices for, as well as allocating the use of, major resources.Grosvenor B. Clarkson, who had been director of the Council of NationalDefense, wrote that the WIB "directed both production and distribution; itsaid what should be produced and where, and it said who should have theproduct."' It fixed prices at which government agencies would purchase specific commodities. While those associated with the WIB spoke of prices being "negotiated" with given firms, the "negotiations" were undertaken in anatmosphere in which the board retained the ultimate power of commandeering the commodity.The day-to-day operations of the WIB were conducted in what werereferred to as "commodity sections." Decisions regarding priorities and pricesfor given products and resources were coordinated through some fifty-sevenseparate sections, each charged with the responsibility for a particular commodity. Even though the commodity section personnel represented the government, they were, as the historian Robert Cuff has observed, generallydrawn from the very industries governed by each sectione8Clarkson characterizes such persons as "[b]usiness men wholly consecrated to Governmentservice, but full of understanding of the problems of ind~stry."~While lesspolite analysis might raise the question of the conflicts of interest inherent inthe staffing of government agencies by personnel from industries that aresupervised by such agencies, it can at least be agreed that the basic decisionmaking functions of the WIB were in the hands of persons whose backgrounds and, presumably, postwar careers were tied to the business system.The commodity sections had their counterparts in what were known as "WarService Committees." Comprised of men representing the industries governed by the commodity sections, and operating under the general auspicesof the United States Chamber of Commerce, the War Service Committeeswere designed, much like trade associations, to represent their industries inthe decision-making processes of the WIB, further assuring business domination of this wartime system.In essence, the commodity sections centralized the basic functioning ofthe American business system in a business-controlled agency of the federal

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government; the agency enjoyed an exercise of power from which there was,for all practical purposes, no right of appeal. Through these sections, thebusiness community experienced the benefits of industry-wide regimentation. In Clarkson's words, the sections "were the substance of the stuff ofwhich requirements, price-fixing, priority, and all the subsidiaries of thoseThey were more than the mobilization of industry.three were made.They were industry mobilized and drilled, responsive, keen, and fully staffed.They were industry militant and in serried ranks."1° The commodity sections were designed to rationalize and coordinate both the demand and supply functions for their respective commodities, thus circumventing normalmarket pricing and allocation functions. Projections of future needs and ofthe production to meet those needs were undertaken, and the effort wasmade to balance the demands of both the government and the public. Conservation programs, and plans for increasing the production of those resources considered to be in short supply, became matters of concern as well.Further serving to homogenize the various industries and to reduce competitive differences among firms was the practice of exchanging trade and statistical data among competitors. As Clarkson summarized it, "The industriesgave not only the ordinary statistical data, but revealed trade secrets, specialprocesses, and improved methods, which, being cleared through the sectionsand the war service committees, enabled their competitors to improve quality or speed up p r o d ~ c t i o n . " ~ ~Some of the more prominent business leaders to serve with Baruch onthe WIB and its related committees were Alexander Legge of InternationalHarvester Company; George N. Peek of Deere and Company; Robert S.Lovett of the Union Pacific Railroad; Herbert B. Swope, brother of the manwho was later to become one of the principal architects of the NRA, GerardSwope of General Electric; J. Leonard Replogle of Cambria Steel Company;Clarence Dillon of Dillon, Read and Company; Howard E. Coffin of HudsonMotor Car Company; Walter S. Gifford of AT&T; Elbert Gary of UnitedStates Steel; Daniel Willard of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; and JuliusRosenwald of Sears, Roebuck and Company. Other business representativesclosely associated with the war effort and serving in government positionsincluded Edward R. Stettinius (assistant secretary of war), Russell Leffingwell(assistant secretary of the treasury), and Dwight Morrow (member of theAllied Maritime Transport Council), each of whom had been-or later became-associated with J. P. Morgan. John D. Ryan (assistant secretary ofwar) was of Anaconda Copper Corporation; Charles M. Schwab (head ofthe Emergency Fleet Corporation) was of Bethlehem Steel; and Frank A.Vanderlip (head of the War Savings Stamp campaign) and Samuel McRoberts(chief of the procurement section of the ordinance division) were presidentand vice-president, respectively, of the First National City Bank. Mention